Balaji Telefilms partners with Chhayabani

Chhayabani Balaji Entertainment, a new entity, will be developed as a platform that will initially produce television content and gradually explore other creative opportunities.

Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Telefilms has entered into an alliance with the Kolkata-based Chhayabani to create "distinctive", "contemporary" and "clutter breaking" television content.

Chhayabani Balaji Entertainment, as the new entity has been named, will be developed as a platform that will initially produce television content and gradually scale up to explore other creative opportunities, while also becoming a hub attracting talented people - technicians and artistes - to work together in a collaborative manner.

This collaboration aims to bring together two media houses with distinctive strengths to explore new formats of television presentation, create "high-end" scripted content with talent.

Says Kapoor, joint managing director, Balaji Telefilms, "Balaji is at a very exciting phase of growth. We have, over time, created a unique position across the films and the television businesses, which by nature are two completely different disciplines. Our aim is to explore how best we can leverage Balaji's competitive strengths to create exciting entertainment across media that will propel our growth. We are delighted that Chhayabani emerged as the most preferred partner for Balaji given their cinematic excellence and their tremendous passion to produce quality entertainment products."

Sameer Nair, group CEO, Balaji Telefilms adds, "We have always believed that growth is collaborative, which has also been our operating philosophy in a super-dynamic industry. We are excited to partner with Chhayabani and the synergies are extremely strong."

According to Nair, the collaboration will help build a "unique" and "robust" platform that allows exploring a wide variety of avenues, given the respective creative strengths and the huge libraries of film and television content that the companies aim to leverage as they move forward.

Saugata Nandi, director, Chhayabani Private comments, "While Balaji holds the No.1 position in the television and film industry in India, Chhayabani has the enviable reputation of being the torch-bearer of the golden era in Bengali television and cinema. Through this platform we look to present very distinctive content that talks the universal language of emotions and instantly connects with the viewer."